


Hell freezing over

by Leaves_and_Smithereens



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Losing Meaning Of Life After Serious Accident, M/M, Proof Of Love, Suicidal Thoughts, This Might Upset You, Tragedy, Unrequited Love, seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-23
Updated: 2013-01-23
Packaged: 2017-11-26 15:22:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/651755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leaves_and_Smithereens/pseuds/Leaves_and_Smithereens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or: The one time Tony loved Loki back.</p><p>"The media of course went haywire about the boy who crippled Iron Man.</p><p>A few weeks later, he was found in his apartment, a gun in one hand, a suicide note in the other—and an impressive hole in the back of his head.</p><p>Too bad Tony couldn’t do the same."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hell freezing over

**Author's Note:**

> Firstly, I want to thank [FelicityGS](http://archiveofourown.org/users/FelicityGS) for beta-reading.
> 
> Secondly, I want to remind you that all things I make Tony say or think here serve the story, and do not necessarily match my own opinions...

“No, Tony— _No_.”

There is not much Tony Stark can do these days, but hurling the full force of his outrage at a horrified Pepper with just his eyes following her hasty retreat? Manageable.

It isn’t even the fact that she refuses to do him this last damn favor.

If it were any other woman staring at him with red, teary eyes from the far end of the room, he could even understand.

But this is _Pepper_.

Pepper, who does what must be done. Pepper, who may shriek and cry and hesitate, but in the end will push the damn button to blast Obie into oblivion. She always does. She can handle things because she’s brave and tough and beautiful and clever, and frankly the best thing that happened in his fucking life.

_So why won’t she help him now?_

“Pepper, please… I need you.”

“No! Do you even know what you are asking for? What this would _mean_ to me?”

Tony blinks. “Do _you_ know what living like this would mean to _me_?”

“Oh no, don’t give me that crap, Anthony Stark! I bet your next inexcusable question will be 'do you love me'! No, no, no—before you’re actually going to ask it, just… shut up! _Of course I do!_ This should also answer your question why I won’t help you _die_!”

It does not. Not really.

Pepper knows him. He figured she, at last, would comprehend that being _Tony Stark_ and being a fucking _cripple_ at the same time is not possible, period.

Seems like he has been wrong.

“Then perhaps we have a different understanding of the word _love_.”

Peppers mouth becomes a thin, white line, and for a moment, he is sorry (no, he is _not_ because it isn’t _fair_ ).

She leaves in silence—again.

Tomorrow, she will be back.

Again.

 

*****

 

Quadriplegia.

Or, to be more precise, “quadriplegia due to complete spinal-cord lesions below C4”, in which “C4” stands for somewhere in his fucking neck, and “complete” for his future need of a wheelchair to be steered with his goddamn _mouth_. Just a bit higher, and he would have simply suffocated where he lied intertwined with the mangled thing that once has been his car (and those idiots keep telling him this like something to be cheerful about).

Interestingly, though his spinal cord has been squished and sliced by ruptured intervertebral discs or shards of shattered vertebrae, and despite the fact he doesn’t feel fuck below his narrowing shoulders, his body is _very_ capable of interrupting one kind of hell that consists of staring at a fucking terracotta-colored wall 24/7 in a ridiculously expensive private clinic _(specialized in rehabilitation, Tony!)_ with the alternate hell of maddening, knife-stabbing pain ghosting through his limbs.

'Neuropathic pain', my ass. Two words failing to express what four letters are more than able to put in a nutshell.

Time has become a sluggish thing measured in appearances of people coming to either force stuff _into_ that body or scrape the remains _out_ again when it has done its unwanted work.

His first and naive notion to just refuse eating makes him snort now, but he sure as hell won’t let anybody feed him like a frigging baby—if his head is the fucking last thing he can control, he sure as hell won’t let people control it in his place. So he lets them plead and argue instead—until they end up using the feeding tube, anyway.

Surprisingly, that’s okay.

Them dragging shit out of his ass, too; he frankly doesn’t care about it—he decided a while ago that everything below his neck simply isn’t _he_ anymore.

Yeah, there has been humiliation first (shock as a nurse explained what she was going to do, _'please don’t worry, Mr. Stark, there isn’t anything to be ashamed of'_ , the stinging in his eyes as he managed to press out his wish for a _male_ colleague at least, the tears flooding his eyes as soon as she has closed the door behind her, his furious holler as he soon after remembered he couldn’t even wipe away the snotty mess he stained his face with), but now he just amuses himself with the fuss they all make around some pounds of dead flesh. There are even nurses who bend one joint after another or shift limbs around so they won’t get bedsore—as if he cares if they just rot away.

He doesn’t exactly know how long he’s been here or back in intensive care of the other hospital doing his surgeries—Pepper mentioned it after he woke from the induced coma into a nightmare, but he can’t really remember; after he forced out of her why he couldn’t feel his fucking hands (or arms, or legs, or _anything_ to begin with), he was busy having a nervous breakdown, and the drugs they pumped into him left him a bit oblivious to irrelevant details such as passed time. He hasn’t asked her ever since, so he doesn’t know how many months he has _to be grateful he survived_ (roughly estimated: between five and six—perceived: several hundred).

The little shit steering the other car came to visit him one day in company of his parents. Big, damp eyes gawking at him as if he might leap up and strangle him any given moment. _Hah_.

He would have, though.

Judging by the way senior weaseled about his own little family business, the efforts he took to grant his son a better future and about what a _brilliant_ student he is _(and please, Henry is so sorry, he only hopes for the best for you and that you someday can accept his apology; he just celebrated his birthday, you know, and otherwise is an outstanding young man),_ Tony is positive they only came to convince him not to have his lawyers tear them apart.

He flashed them a frosty smile and politely told daddy to better go find himself and junior a job as grocery clerks.

The media of course went haywire about the boy who crippled Iron Man.

A few weeks later, he was found in his apartment, a gun in one hand, a suicide note in the other—and an impressive hole in the back of his head.

Too bad Tony couldn’t do the same.

 

*****

 

He is startled awake by a pair of cold fingers brushing down his cheek.

It takes a moment for him to adjust—there are few things more disconcerting than waking in a rush of fear and being unable to jerk away from the dark figure looming over his bed.

Finally, his brain comes up with the concept of a tall, thin Norse deity.

“You crazy little _shit_!”

Loki takes a step back, face like a mask, and starts to dissolve into thin air. In the blue light still embedded in what once was his chest, Tony can see something suspiciously looking like a tear running down too pale skin.

“I apologize—it was not my intention to frighten you.”

The powerful voice he last heard booming out threats and gales of laughter on TV is no more than a soothing honey-coated murmur—like always when Loki tries to speak to _him_.

_But of course._

“Wait.”

Usually, trying to command this nut-job is the best way to be presented with a knife in the guts; but for Tony, it’s a shimmer of hope in flickering eyes as Loki stops to wait in tensed silence, rooted to the spot.

Naturally, Tony has noticed something was _off_ when Loki suddenly stopped trying to kill him. He enthusiastically continued to trash Cap or Natasha or his brother at any given opportunity—but being confronted with Iron Man, he just… _stared_. Alternately, he just vanished.

The day Loki threw himself over Tony to take a load of debris critical for even the suit in his stead, Thor rejoiced for his brother coming back to his senses.

He could not have been more wrong.

Not quite a week later, Tony saw himself confronted with the utter absurdity of a megalomaniac, murderous god standing in his workshop in full regalia, expressing his _adoration_ with the most head-spinning phrases he had ever heard and a travesty of shyness on Loki’s face while politely offering a fanciful knife on his open palms stretched out in Tony’s direction.

Needless to say, he’d looked at Loki’s serious face, the knife, then back at his face—and exploded with laughter.

The look of complete _heartbreak_ in the eyes of a guy decimating a smaller village’s population on a good day without so much as a blink only made Tony lose it more, as he bent over holding his stomach, laughing so hard he cried as Loki vanished.

Afterward, he had been sure everything would go back to normal soon. But instead of planning Tony’s demise for avenging his mangled pride, Loki preferred to beat down the others and avoid _him_ at all costs—the times Loki didn’t come back to try his luck anew that is.

So things had been funny, but uneventful.

However, the evening Tony woke where he dozed off on the couch to a sleeping god of mischief in the opposite armchair (who, as video surveillance later showed, spent the entire afternoon watching him with a contented smile on his face until he dropped off as well), he snapped. That Loki looked like being on the brink to tears as he stood there and listened motionless to all the shouted reasons why Tony would never love him _(until hell freezes over!)_ didn’t make it any better at all.

The only bonus he got out of this episode of 'creepy things he doesn’t need in his life' was Loki’s now permanent absence in it—until _now_ , of course.

“You still love me?”

Loki is anything but dumb, so there’s already wariness in the way he steps closer, in the way his gaze lets go of Tony's eyes for a moment to wander down and sweep over a ruined body Tony once called his own, before coming back to stare at what feels like his very soul again.

“I do.”

Tony doesn’t really know what Loki _sees_ in him. He doesn’t know if he _wants_ to comprehend it, either; but looking back up into those misty-green eyes, regarding him with determination, he can’t deny it’s _something_ —and it burns _deep_.

“Then prove it.”

Loki sinks down on his knees right beside him, knowing grief already etched into his features—and yet will ask, yet will do, Tony can tell (he will he will he _must_ ).

“What is it you want me to do?”

Tony closes his eyes and sights in relief.

_"Kill me.”_

Loki doesn’t say anything for a long time, and when he does it’s so faint Tony almost misses it.

“Tell me _why_.”

It’s such a lost little thing, it makes Tony’s eyes snap open again.

The pressed together lips he sees remind him of Pepper, earlier.

“Why,” Tony grates, “because you wanna give me _too_ one of those pathetic ‘your-life-isn’t-pointless-everything-will-be-fine’ speeches? Oh, gimme a _break_! It’s one thing for everyone else trying to sell me that rubbish. For _you_? Whole new level of bullshit, so fuck—“

The hand shooting out of nowhere to curl around his throat gives him pause. It lies there, doing nothing; just a dormant weight his pulse beats fluttery against as Tony takes in the sight above him.

“You are… so _cruel_ , Anthony Stark.”

There _are_ tears now, clinging to black lashes until they can’t no longer deny gravity, spilling down over too-sharp cheekbones until they drip-drip-drop right onto Tony’s pillow, his nose, his eyes (he blinks because they _burn_ ).

“How I wish those eyes would _once_ look upon me with the same warmth they spare for people who’d rather see their owner die a little more each day instead of ending what is no longer his life.”

Tony breaths out a faltering breath he until now hasn’t realized he held.

How could _Loki_ of all people comprehend…

“If you already know... why make me speak it out, anyway?”

“Because,” he hisses around bared teeth, “I hoped, in exchange for tearing out the remains of the tattered thing I once called my heart along with your life, the last thing for me to remember of you be your voice, just talking to me like it would to a friend instead of… “

Loki’s eyes burn like faraway suns pouring molten pain-regret-loss upon him, and Tony wants nothing more than to look away, but he can’t. Why is he so frightened by being a couple of fingers closer to his goal?

Loki’s so close, Tony can feel his skipping breath brushing coolly over his face.

“I will kill you, anyway. I would do _everything_ in exchange for nothing—but I am selfish enough to at least hope. So tell me, Anthony: is this too much a thing to ask?”

As Loki’s tears mingle with his own, it somehow hurts worse.

_(Perhaps we have a different understanding of the word love.)_

“Do it,” Tony breathes, “do it and I will give you even _better_.”

Loki sights ( _relieved_ ), and the hand resting around his throat vanishes. There is a faint rustle of clothing being pulled open—the diminished blue indicates the disappeared hand has found a new refuge in the hollow of his once-chest. He doesn’t look to confirm this theory, though ( _irrelevant_ ). Another hand appears at his temple, and one-two-three-four fingers crawl up into his hair to draw soothing circles onto his scalp, while a thumb settles to caress his cheek.

Tony sights ( _relieved_ ), opens his mouth, and begins to speak.

 

He never looks away from the gleaming twin-stars above him as he tells them about high school, DUM-E, the programming of JARVIS, all the little scandals and great achievements of one Tony Stark, all the things that ever sparked his interest and amuse him still.

He talks and talks and talks, and slowly, unobtrusively, his tongue seems to get a bit _tired_ in his mouth and his lips are harder to move like on a chilly winter’s day—but Tony doesn’t bother because he _knows_ Loki does understand him, anyway.

When his mouth fails him, he talks with his eyes instead, knowing for Loki to be right here still, smiling a contend little smile down on Tony that will cradle his mind snugly until it sleeps. He is safe and _loved_.

Up in the sky, there are two blood red suns that shine for him alone.

The last thing he feels is a whisper of frozen lips, melting on his own.


End file.
